1 Answer
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The boot problem may be caused by the switch from LightDM to gdm3 as the default login display manager in Ubuntu 18.04. gdm3 is more heavyweight than the lightweight lightdm login display manager, and it may be causing your 9-year-old laptop to choke under the load of starting gdm3 when it is booting Ubuntu 18.04.

You can switch the login display manager from gdm3 to lightdm with the following commands.

sudo apt install lightdm
sudo reboot

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm will open up a new window allowing you to select lightdm as the default login display manager. Use the arrow keys to select lightdm and press the Tab key to put the focus on <OK> and press Enter. Then reboot by running this command: sudo reboot